I.
Ecology & political economy
Institutional intersections of environment and economy across the Indo-Pakistan border.
Historian · South Asia
Land, water, and the long history of hierarchy.
I am a historian of early modern and colonial South Asia, writing on caste, ecology, and political economy in the arid zones of Marwar and the Thar Desert. My current book, Claiming Caste, reads three centuries of land grants to reveal how access to land and water persistently shaped hierarchical status.
II.
Caste & social organization
Histories of caste, kinship, and status in early modern and colonial North India.
III.
Land & labor reform
Reform, revenue, and the shaping of rural life in the Thar Desert.
Book in preparation
Claiming Caste
Land, Water and Hierarchy in North India, c. 1660–1950
A revisionist history of arid-zone South Asia, read through the lens of land grants in Marwar (Jodhpur) state. Across three long centuries, ownership of and access to sources of land and water shaped claims to — and contests over — hierarchical status.